COVID-19: Projection Tracking Update -23rd Oct

How are #COVID deaths tracking against endemic projections for this E&W Flu Season?

(This is a weekly report)

IT TRACKS FOUR THINGS:

⚫️ Total Mortality against 5YR average and +/- 1 standard deviation.

🔵 ONS COVID-related Deaths (all mentions) against expected Endemic curves.

🔴 Pneumonia/Influenza Deaths (all mentions) against the 5YR Average.

🟣 COVID + Pneumonia/Influenza Deaths against the Pneu/Inf 5YR average. **

🚨 IF ⚫️ & 🟣 materially deviate above the respective 5YR averages, then we are seeing an ADDITIONAL mortality effect from COVID-19.

**⚠️ DOUBLE COUNTING CAUTION with 🟣 Calc:

There were 18,650 JOINT mentions of Pneumonia/Influenza and COVID on death certs between 1st Jan – 31st Aug, which represent ⅓ of all Pneumonia/Influenza mentions.

THEREFORE, for 🟣 we’ve added a lower range to account for the up to 33% dual mentions.

WEEK 41:

This is the latest deaths data from ONS, w/e 9th Oct 2020.

⚫️ Total Mortality sits within expected range.

🔴 Pneumonia/Influenza mentions are down 417 (17,173 down YTD).

🔵 COVID-related deaths ARE trending above expected endemic range.

🟣 When you combine COVID with Pneumonia/Influenza, the total is ranges up to perfectly tracking the 5YR average for Infectious Respiratory Disease Deaths.

WEEK 42-43:

ONS report with a lag, to allow death registrations to be made and processed. As of today, ONS are 2 weeks behind the daily provisional data from DHSC.

🔮 So, roughly, we can leverage the DHSC 🔵 COVID-related Deaths data and make assumptions on Pneumonia/Influenza 2020 trending to see where this graph is going… (faint tails):

🔵 COVID-related deaths are deviating strongly from the expected endemic range, however, it must be placed in context with 🟣.

🟣 Dependant on how many joint mentions we are seeing on Death Certs, we could be seeing a breakout from the Pneumonia/Influenza 5YR average.

⚫️ The ultimate assessment can only be made once the weekly ONS Total Mortality figures, to see if we are experiencing an excess in mortality vs re-badging of deaths to COVID.

NET-NET:

🔀 Clearly we are coding up what would otherwise be classified as Pneumonia/Influenza as COVID-19, and potentially doing the same for unrelated fatal conditions. 

Does THIS WEEKS data justify the Lockdowns and panic❓

❌ The answer is still… NO. Flu Season is playing out as expected, albeit with more respiratory disease deckchairs being swapped out.

🔬 These leading indicators are polluted by the flawed testing strategy, testing tech and poor case definition. Fix this with urgency, so we can truly assess and manage real risk.

😫 Sadly, with 20M less effective tests coming online shortly in England (with 8x high FP rate!), it’s likely to get MUCH MORE NOISY and unreliable.

#FactsNotFear #StayCalm #ContextMatters

______

SOURCES:

• ONS Weekly Deaths Data (20th Oct)
• DHSC COVID-19 Dashboard (23rd Oct)

NOTE: Projections made in early August 2020 and shared on FB. They have not and will not be altered, so they can be thoroughly evaluated.

The Original Facebook Post